Few Critter views but loads of water

(click on photo to enlarge)

This is Old River, and those are trailers owned by weekend hunters and fishermen on what used to be the bank of Old River. I took this shot from atop the Mississippi River levee near Melwood. Old River is a left over channel of the Mississippi River after the Corp of Engineers straighted out some of the river curves back many decades ago. The Mississippi River bank is over on the other side of the second line of trees. You can see a little of how far Old Man River has spread over his banks here, but where the levees are further apart, whole entire farms, thousands of acres, are covered in several feet of water.

The closest trees that you see here are close to the bottom of the levee. The trees further out are on the bank of the Mississippi. If you click to enlarge the photo, you can see the barge out there on the river.
Here's a closer look at a barge traveling up the river(on the left) and one traveling down river. I zoomed out as far as I could to get this shot.
This is a house that was built just last year near the bank of the Mississippi River. The levee, from where I took this shot, is about 1/2 mile from the house. The people who live here are having to boat in and out. The water surrounding the house is covering farm land that will have to wait to be planted until after the water drains off and the land dries enough.

We didn't get to travel down the part of the White River levee where all the deer and other critters would have likely been today due to the Army Corp of Engineers having that part of the levee closed off because of the flooding. I was very disappointed that the only critter photos I was able to get were of a few ducks, a crane, and a few fishermen. We did see 1 doe deer and a bald eagle today, but I wasn't quick enough with my camera to get shots of them.

The White River was flooded levee to levee down the part we were able to travel, and as you can see from the photos above, so was the Mississippi. The flood stage at Helena, near where we live, is 44 ft. and today the river stage is about 46.1 feet.